


If I'm To Die (before i reach you)

by ConcerningConstellations



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Ana needs a Break, Angst, Death, Did I Mention, Early Overwatch, Empathy, Experimental, Fluctuating Style, Friendship, Gen, God Complex, Headcanon, Headcanon that every time Mercy resurrects she feels what killed her patient, Im trying my best here, Isolation, Jack As A Father-Figure, No Science Was Used In The Making Of This Fic, Obscure and Confusing Timeline, Only Self-Indulgence, POV Second Person, PTSD, Pain And Suffering ™, Pre-Fall of Overwatch, Questionable Judgement, Rebirth, Resurrection, Tags Are Hard, Team as Family, The First Resurrection, War, a n g s t, anguish, as per usual, maybe a series?, trama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 18:18:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13195848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConcerningConstellations/pseuds/ConcerningConstellations
Summary: “Nothing is free. Everything has to be paid for. For every profit in one thing, payment in some other thing. For every life, a death. Even your music, of which we have heard so much, that had to be paid for. Your wife was the payment for your music. Hell is now satisfied.”-Ted Hughes; The Tiger’s Bones-And then the realization dawns upon you like a sunrise— but an ugly one. An all too obtrusive and sudden awakening to the start of a new day, but one you did not want, had not asked for. It pushes up your throat and against your chest, an ache that has nothing to do with pain.(OR: Angela's first Resurrection, with a twist).





	If I'm To Die (before i reach you)

**Author's Note:**

> i'm still alive, for those of you wondering. 
> 
> i'm conflicted to classify this fic as one thing-- it started as a challenge to write in 2nd-person, then transformed into the headcanon of "what if every time Angela resurrection, she felt what killed her patient?" and then kind of ended vaguely with the idea of continuing this idea into other chapters. the style is a bit loose and fluctuating. a part of me wanted to keep editing it, but i was worried that i would obsess over it and end up not posting it, just like most of the fics i write.
> 
> anyways. thank you guys again for every kudos, comment, and bookmark. i appreciate it more than words can say :)
> 
> warning: major character death (kind of).

It was an accident.

 

No one saw the quiet woman creep between the busted-in windows of some tall, decrepit building; no one saw her puttering together the sniper in the shade of blue cannon-smoke and the sleet of rain; no one saw her brace the firearm against one shoulder, rest the muzzle against the cracking concrete and draw in that long, careful breath, steady despite the cold; no one saw her scope flicker in the scraps of sunlight slicing between heavy clouds, in the flashes of explosions, in the flames that lined abandoned streets, feasting on wood and broken trucks and bodies. No one saw her pointer finger find the trigger and begin to pull back. 

 

But even here— where gunfire was exchanged between both fronts like a breeze, where the fighters soared overhead on great silver wings, dropping bombs that shook the ground like an earthquake— you heard the bullet leave the chamber. 

 

It was some horrible, banging sound, one that echoed in the most calloused, impenitent way, as if to say _I was here, here, here— and there’s nothing you can do to change that_. It was a roar and a whisper, a simple statement of fact. 

 

It was an accident.

 

Jack Morrison kneeled over in his uniform, a quick, gurgling sort of noise spilling out his mouth, his rifle dropping from his hands as he went to clutch the hole in his chest.

 

You are close enough behind the man so that when the bullet tears straight through him, you see a splash of scarlet spray the air. A few drops splatter against your cheek, lost and unidentifiably against the grime that has already roosted there, rendering the once-pearly skin grey and ashy. He falls before you in that same way that so many already have— you watch as he knees give out, his spine seizing with the sudden inability to straighten itself, his shoulders sharp and pronounced against the fabric of his jacket, riddled with pain. It was as if gravity had gotten too greedy; as if his body couldn’t help but crumple under its own weight.

 

For a moment, you can not move. The war has gone dark and blurry, the rain has paused between the sky and ground, the sound of screaming and shooting have mixed and turned into a sharp ringing between your ears, a splitting pain in your head. Your feet stick to the ground, held there by invisible shackles. Your lungs fill with ice. The world pulses in and out of focus with the beating of your heart as you come to terms with what is happening here, the scene you have just witnessed, the newly placed weight settling upon your shoulders.

 

Because Jack is dying, suddenly. And you know it’s on you.

 

“Breathe,” you find yourself telling him in a voice too calm, realizing that you have already slid the white latex gloves onto your hands, although you know they will do no good. Bending over, you force his hands away from his chest, and in a flash have begun to cut away at the clothes between you and the wound, utilizing the surgeon’s scissors you keep tucked away in your belt. You do not think. You do not feel. You just work on keeping your head clear, your hands steady, your heart from jumping out your throat. There’s no time for anything else.

 

He makes a noise as you put him flat to the ground, guiding him onto his back. Blood bubbles between his lips, the cracks of his teeth. He looks up at you through eyes that do not see.

 

“Breathe,” you tell him again, more sternly, stuffing the wound full of gauze and then reaching for your staff, staining its fine handle with red. You feel dizzy, suddenly. “You’re okay— I have you, Jack, I have you. Don’t move. I know it hurts. Don’t move.”

 

He’s bleeding internally, you know. One lung is punctured straight through, the intestine tore, the liver ruptured and ruined. He’ll drown himself to death, soon. 

 

Your hands find the dial at the tip of the Caduceus, tuning it as high as it would go. It’s reckless. You won’t have enough power for the rest of the wounded if this battle doesn’t end soon. You don’t care.

 

“Breathe,” you beg him, and set him alight with the glow of the healing staff, the thing you spent years creating, renovating, mastering— the object of your obsession, every wire a personal matter, every rounded edge your _magnum opus_. It fires millions upon millions of nanites into him, microscopic miracles that hum between your hands, a golden chain that brings back some of his color, pushing back the grayness invading his face. But only briefly. Too soon, he wilts once more, pale and withering like some flower in need of sunshine, shriveled against the dirt. You hold the trigger down, tell yourself it will work. It _will_ work. 

 

There is a hand on yours, warm and wet. Jack looks at you through familiar blue eyes, clouded with pain but now clear in every other regard, blinking away the raindrops. His grip swallows up most of your hand, pulls it away from the staff in a manner that feels almost gentle. The beam disconnects. Jack dims.

 

The world is swaying. You hear yelling in the distance, the sound of fast-approaching footsteps, the roaring of a plane somewhere to the east. 

 

“Stop,” you plead. There is something hot dripping down your cheeks, something too salty and bitter to be rain.

 

His eyes just stare into yours, his breath shuttering, his lips finding their way into some crude semblance of a grin. 

 

“…Only got… so much luck,” he bites out around the tremors, with a kind of nonchalance that makes you ache. “Gotta— run out— _gah_ —.”

 

“You said luck had nothing to do with it,” you reminded him with an almost angry sort of persistence. Discarding the staff, you brush away his hand and go to push against the wound, the blood so thick atop his chest that it rose up between your fingers, the white of the gauze now completely soaked in carmine. The man grimaces, his back arching as the pain gnaws at her nerves, his uniform no longer blue. You’re going to be sick. You’re going to pass out. Jack is dying. He’s _dying_ — 

 

No. No. He _can’t_ , you remember, at least not here, not under your watch, not while he was on the young side of forty and fighting like hell. Not now, not while he still owed Ana a rematch at that chess game after Reyes accidentally knocked over the board trying to dance the Charleston. Not while you still had something to say about it. 

 

“Now stop talking and just— just—“

 

His hand is on your wrist. His fingers wrap completely around the joint, smearing your sleeve the same shade of red that trickles out the side of his mouth, and he tries to say something despite your protests, but it’s a wheeze, a gasp, the air no longer able to reach his lungs and settle there. You push harder against to wound, trying to put the blood back, trying to make it right. The comms buzz in your ears with questions, Reinhardt’s hard accent demanding to know what was going on. You don’t answer. You don’t know how.

 

“Please,” you beg him, your resolve slipping, your shoulders starting to shake. “Wait— _wait_ , just— give me a second to— I can fix it. I _can_ fix it. I can—“

 

He squeezes your wrist, the corner of his lips twisting up ever so slightly. He’s stopped choking on his own breath. The ribcage under your hands has gone still.

 

You’re not sure when he dies; not sure when his heart ran out of blood to pump, when his body could do more but shut down and fade. But after a minute of you kneeling there next to him, pressing your hands against his corpse’s chest, telling him to stay awake, stay awake, _hold on_ — Ana appears by your side. You don’t need to look at her— don’t need to turn and see the anguish drawn upon her face, the tears frozen there in the dark pools of her eyes. She puts her hands atop your shoulders and tries gently to pry you away, tries to tell you to let him lie, that it’s done, that it wasn’t your fault.

 

But you jerk yourself out from between her hands, rip off the latex gloves that separate you from him, go to press two fingers under his jaw, feeling for a pulse. It’s there, you’re sure, somewhere. 

 

“Stop it,” you seethe between the sobs, running your hands over his face, already cold, colorless, _wrong_. “I can— I can do it, I just need to keep the— the blood from…“

 

“Angela,” she tells you, her usually confident tone softening at the edges. The woman seems to have trouble looking at what was left of Jack— every time her eyes fell upon the figure, her frame would go straight and stiff, as if struck. The pelting rain made her hair stick to her forehead; made her seem smaller, somehow. “Angela, he’s—”

 

You shake your head, bare your teeth, glare at her over your shoulder as you continue to run your hands over his broken body. You cannot believe her— you cannot understand why she is just standing there, why her hands hang limply by her sides, why her face is one of resignation.

 

“What are you— why won’t you _help me?”_ you demand, your voice breaking, your heart about to spilt in two. From the pocket on your arm, you bring out your own personal batch of nanites, rip off the cap of the syringe, flick the glass frantically with your nail to ensure that the bubbles don’t get trapped in the needle. You find that your hands are shaking too hard to find a vein. You try to take a deep breath, but the air won’t fit right in your lungs.

 

This time, Ana is not gentle. She grabs you by the arms and forces you off of his body, placing herself between you and him, kneeling down and obfuscating your view of the man. “Stop,” she says, her voice turning harder, her eyes narrowing. Her hands tighten, squeezing you as you try to break free. “Stop, Angela! Put— put that down.” She takes the syringe from your hands before it could hurt either of you. 

 

“He’s _gone.”_

 

Her voice reaches you like a wave, growing and growing and growing before crashing down atop your head, pushing down your airway, drowning you in the sound. You rebel against the words, try to wiggle your way around their meaning. 

 

“You don’t understand,” you explain, surely. There is something growing at the base of your throat, something hot and cold and bitter like metal. Its roots dig deep into your stomach, twisting, choking. It turns your voice weaker. “Please, just let me— let me go and—“

 

— and he won’t turn into your parents, won’t live that legacy, won’t be the man who was and did and died because of some war he never started. He won’t be buried under a white headstone, one of thousands, of _millions_ , won’t be just another soldier you allowed to get swallowed by the battlefield. Another person you were not quick or clever enough to save. Another face to plague your nightmares. He won’t. _He won’t._

 

You push past Ana with a strength you did not know you possessed, put your hands on Jack’s shoulders, ignored the blood drying there. The metallic taste in your mouth grows stronger, the sensation of something traveling up your spine making your frame go tense and tight, a heat burning so fiercely in your chest that it drove away the soaking chill of the rain. You feel it travel through your veins, feel it light up your fingers, your face, the line that splits your back down the middle. 

 

Jack Morrison does not get to die here. You won’t let him.

 

It was an accident. Not the sniper, not the bullet, not the blood on your hands or hole in his chest— it was what came after. The yellow light that flooded out from your eyes, the glow that heated up your palms, the sudden feeling that you were forcing something back into place. The nanites inside of you swelled. You felt them vibrate, something that was initially painful, like stretching a muscle you never knew you had. Your arms shook, your chest heaving as you suddenly found it harder to keep yourself upright, an immense weight settling somewhere between your shoulders, the wings that sprouted from your back extending under the pressure.

 

“Jack,” you managed, fighting for the words between bursts of static, a sort of dizziness that you swore would make you sick. “Get _up.”_

 

You feel sunlight despite the overcast. It floods into your system, up your spine, down your legs. You feel in your hands, feel it warming up the flesh under your fingers, feel it going down into the body through the entry wound in its chest, feel it seeping in through the path the bullet carved. Whiteness invades your vision, splattering over the image of your blood-stained knuckles. You can’t hear anything except your own heart drumming in your ears, the faint sound of Ana calling your name, lightning striking the ground. Time stretches out. It means nothing anymore—it’s standing still and going fast and reversing all at the same time, running out and running in, rushing back and forth between your fingers, like sand, like water. 

 

Time took a lot of things from you. You figure it owes you this much.

 

Your elbows buckle and the world tilts hard to the left, and when your sight comes back blurry and doubled, you can see a sideways horizon, feel the mud pushed up against your cheek. Everything is buzzing. Your head is like the inside of a beehive, a million sirens going off at once, a pots-and-pans-smashing-together sort of cacophony that makes it impossible to focus. Your fingers seem unable to stop shivering, and your chest aches as if someone had taken a sledgehammer and driven it against your ribs with the intent on breaking through to your lungs, your heart, the things you kept there. You don’t know what’s happening— don’t know why you suddenly lack the energy to lift your head, move your legs— and for a moment, you are certain, somehow, that you are dying.

 

From behind you, muffled by a painfully-pitched ringing noise slowly fading between your ears, there is the sound of someone speaking. Someone saying something over and over again, like the word was all they knew, all they cared about, all that mattered. Someone is crying— the kind of crying that comes and goes in waves, steady one moment, breathless the next.

 

You want to turn and look, want to remove your face from the dirt, pick yourself up and ask what had happened— but you are too busy trying to remember what you had just done, why your bare hands prickled as if you had just shoved them between ice cubes, sucking away all the heat.

 

Someone is gasping hard, groaning out a foggy question, struggling to get off the ground. This voice is different— deep, low, resounding. It sparks something inside of you, something that makes the breath settle a little deeper inside your lungs.

 

Then, amidst the haze of smoke and grey sky, there is a face in front of your own, dark, puffy eyes drawn in frantic shock, a familiar tattoo printed on one cheek. Ana. She’s saying something— yelling it, really, holding up three fingers, or maybe only one. You look at her blankly, try to remember what she is doing here.

 

“—gela… Angela, are you—“ Her voice parts the static in your head, pushes past the fog, grounds you in reality. 

 

And then, by her side, you see something else pushing its way into your line of slight, a figure dressed in blues and blood reds, pale hair and azure eyes. You see his lips, chapped and bleeding but still somehow pulled into some echo of a smile, however worn, however tired. A streak of moonlight cuts through the clouds and lights up one side of his face, turns him into some ethereal being, highlights him in a shade of white so intense that it almost hurts to look at.

 

Jack leans against Ana, reaches for you and misses, as if he was wrestling to regain coordination. The blood is still soaked into his jacket, but he seems painless, free, _alive—_

 

The thought washes over you with such violent urgency that it jolts you into action, seizes your spine and your arms and your legs, tries to get you up from the ground so you can go to him— so you can account for the pulse under his jaw—run your hands over his skin and feel the heat that blossomed there— because Jack Morrison— the man you’ve know most of your life, the man who hand-picked you to head the Overwatch’s medical department, the man you swore to protect— is _alive._

 

You hand lifts from the ground, wobbles, finds his in the air. You grab onto him so hard that you feel your knuckles ache.

 

They both help pick you up, try to get you to into a sitting position, but the effort emphasizes the ache in your chest and almost makes you blackout. So you lean against Ana as she presses two fingers to the underside of your wrists, as she tells you to breathe, tells you to take it slow.

 

“What happened?” you try to say, but your voice is like sandpaper, catching in your throat. “Jack?”

 

“I—“ He shakes his head, his hand still in your own. His face is flushed, eyes creased with such thorough confusion that you know he must be as lost as you.“I don’t know. I’m not— hell, Ange, you’re freezing. What did you do?”

 

“She glowed like a sunset over the Caribbean,” Ana remarks, pressing a hand to your forehead. Her skin is like fire against yours. “She brought you back.”

 

_She brought you back._

 

It had stopped raining. The echo of gunfire had been watered-down, driven further into enemy lines, a clear sign of the battle tipping towards victory. A hovercraft was racing along the horizon, its nose angled at the three of you, its landing lights on. You had ripped out your comms long ago, but you see Ana tilt her head, listening to the radio in her ear. 

 

“This is Amari— I read you,” she says, and then pauses. Her eyes glance between you and Jack, a strange mix of relief and worry. She struggles to keep her voice level. “Affirmative. Morrison and Ziegler are alive for and accounted for. They’re— we’re okay. We’re okay.”

 

Those words play on repeat in your head, driving the rigidness from your spine, the stiffness from your limbs. You drown in them willingly, allowing all other thoughts to dull and fade.

 

“I died,” Jack says, tentatively touching the red smeared against his chest, his voice lacking any real sense of conviction. “I— I don’t understand.”

 

You remember the feeling of electricity running up from your toes to your head, remembering the sensation of heat under your palms, the intense weight pressing between your shoulders.You remember in that strange, detached way that you only remember dreams, fragments of color, burst of sounds. But you have no doubt in what you have done— no doubt in the significance of it all. 

 

“I…” You try to make sense of it. Try to find a better, more medically correct way of saying _I told Death no_. “… I couldn’t let it happen. I saw you, and I couldn’t—“

 

And then, without preface, you feel your chest crack open. 

 

Lights dazzle you on the backs of your eyelids, burning patterns into your visions, reaching down your throat and ripping the air from your lungs. Your hands press against your ribcage, clawing at where the ache had exploded into a searing pain, wiggling its way deeper into your skin like a dull knife, tearing a scream from your throat and tears from your eyes. You spasm, feel your limbs retract and convulse, echoes of blackness blooming in your vision. 

 

It was like nothing you’ve ever felt before— like someone had tore out your heart with their bare hands, like you were dying in slow motion.

 

Ana’s hands are all over you, grabbing your wrists and pulling them away, trying to see what had happened. You barely hear her voice above the sound of blood roaring in your ears, your screams splitting the air in two. It hurts— _Gott_ , it _hurts_ —

 

“—me see, let me see— call medical, tell them— Jack— the syringe— we’re okay Ange, it’s going to be—“

 

And then you feel something cold enter your veins, feel it pressing down on your eyelids, ebbing away at your conscious until it swept what was left of you away under a blanket of blackness, a sleep you were not sure you’d wake up from.

 

* * *

 

If you dream, you don’t remember any of it.

 

You drift through blackness, a state of being where one is not entirely aware of their own sentience— where you are left only with a vague impression of what you had done, how you had done it— where all that was left for you was the faint ring from some far-away place— a one-word mantra— a prayer of _Angela, Angela, Angela_.

 

* * *

 

It’s impossible to tell how long it takes for you to come back. Back to a world of bright fluorescents, too-white tiled ceilings, the rhythmic beeping of a heart monitor. Back to that dull aching in your chest, an exhaustion the wraps around your bones, ties your limbs to the bed you find yourself lying on. 

 

Someone had stripped you of your suit and dark under-layer, left you in a loose hospital gown whose sleeves ended past your fingers. You no longer feel the crust of dirt and dried blood sticking against your hands, but you can taste it in your mouth, the grime of the battlefront pressed against your tongue, stuck between your teeth. You want water. You want to know how you got here in the Intensive Care Ward, what had happened to Ana, to Jack, to the knife that you had felt digging into your chest.

 

With what you know is too much effort, you lift an arm, slide your fingers beneath the hemming of your gown, search for a scar, an exit wound, a sign to tell you what had happened before you had gone under. But, much to your blurry confusion, it’s all smooth. The gentle arches of your ribs are soft and uninterrupted, void of ruptures, of wounds, of the tell-tale crinkle of bandages.

 

“Hey.” 

 

You had not seen him there, laid atop his own bed, the sheets kicked off to the side in what you knew was protest. There is an IV in his arm, a screen off to the side displaying his 02 stats and heart-rate, but everything about him was bright and full and alive, his skin glowing in the sunlight that filtered through the half-drawn drapes. His eyes, blue and blooming, stare right into yours. The sight helps wakes you up, jumpstarts the beating in your chest.

 

“Jack,” you say, managing to sit up. It makes your head throb— you watch as the lights smear together and stick to corners of your vision. “What… are you alright?”

 

He throws his feet over the side of his cot, yanking the thin needle out of his wrist before you could scold him not to. “I’m fine,” he tells you, and although he does not limp, there is something off about him, maybe in his gate, the way he walks to you in a not-quite-straight line. He helps you sit straight, putting one large hand on the small of your back. He is warm against the metal of your spine. “I— I’m fine. How are _you?”_

 

You don’t know. You can’t remember. Immediately, you grab the bottom of his shirt, lift it all the way up, filter through the numerous scars and scrapes that stuck with him throughout the years. Your hands drift over his ribs, the spot above where his heart lies, and for a moment all you can see is the blood and the bile and the bits of bone that once spurted out from the hole dug there, the aftermath of the bullet meant to kill him, that _did_ kill him. Above you, you hear the man suck in a gentle breath.

 

There is no bandage here. No scar. No scrap of white to indicated that anything happened. Your head throbs with the realization. The world tilts sideways.

 

“I don’t— I’m trying to understand.” 

 

“That’s all any of us have been trying to do for the past twelve hours, Ange,” Jack laughs, pulling the shirt down and settling on the edge of your bunk. His hand doesn’t leave your shoulder, and you’re thankful.

 

“You died,” you say, a fact, a statement, your tone steady despite the dropping feeling in your stomach. “I saw it.”

 

Jack pauses, and you know he’s staring at you, can feel his eyes stick to the side of your face. “Yeah,” he says, that same buffer of indifference in his tone. 

 

“And I brought you back.” 

 

“Yes.”

 

“From death.”

 

Jack just nods. 

 

You have done it before— used defibrillators to shock patient’s heart back to life, watched their back arch as they sucked in that first breath back. But that wasn’t this. That wasn’t that taste of metal in your mouth, of fire beneath your fingers, a burning sensation so intense it made you see white. 

 

“Okay,” you say, nodding slowly. You bring a hand up and press against your chest, the space you felt a knife tore through. “I passed out.”

 

Jack looks down. From the corner of your eye, you can see the man rub his hand over one knee, conjuring up the words. “Ana gave you some sort of anesthetic. She— we didn’t know what was wrong. You were screaming. I could barely hold you down.”

 

“I thought I was stabbed. Shot.” 

 

_Dead._

 

“You weren’t,” he tells you, and though know this should make you feel better, it only furthers your confusion. “I mean, even before that, you looked exhausted. Whatever you did really took a toll.”

 

_Whatever you did._ But what did you do?

 

The double-doors at the front of the room slide open, and when you lift your head to look, you find Ana dressed in a clean blue uniform striding over the threshold. Behind her trail a half dozen or so figures wearing lab coats, clutching one or two clipboards to their chest, arguing quietly between each other. You recognize most of them— they’ve shadowed you in the lab, helped you with a few of your large-scale projects, even served next to you on the field. You stare at them blankly, wonder what they’re doing here.

 

Once they catch sight of you awake and sitting up, they rally.

 

“Dr. Ziegler!” one calls, making for your bedside so quickly he nearly tripped over someone else’s foot. However, he is cut short by Ana’s outstretched arm slamming into his chest, holding him back before he could get anywhere close to where you lay.

 

“Out,” she demands, not turning to look at any of them. There is a certain strain in her voice that you almost find amusing, like the consistent chatter was giving her a headache.

 

The group behind her protests, swelling up to rebel against the officer in their way. All their eyes are glued onto you, hungry and curious, some standing on their toes to get a glance and you over one another. You suddenly feel rather exposed in your paper-thin and backless hospital gown.

 

“But we’re—“

 

“You can’t be serious—” 

 

“She just woke u—”

 

Ana tilts her head in their direction, bears her teeth. “It wasn’t a suggestion,” she grows, silencing the group. “Out!”

 

They file out the door as haphazardly as they had entered, many of them turning to get one last look at you before falling out of sight, murmuring frantically to one other and motioning to something on their charts, heads tucked together. They must have heard what happened. 

 

“They’ve been trailing me since we got here,” Ana mutters, padding closer and rubbing at the bags under her eyes, dark half-moons that make her look older. “Wanted me to give you a dose of Epinephrine, wake you up, ask you questions. I had to ban them from the clinic.”

 

“You can do that?” you ask, looking up at her with what you hope was a jesting smile. She shrugs, seats herself on the edge of the bed so you are sandwiched between her and Jack, lets out a tired little sigh.

 

“As far as those lab rats know, I can do whatever I want.”

 

You try to laugh, but it hurts, reminds you of the ache in your chest. Your fingers dance over the spot just above your heart, rub away the pins-and-needles kind of pain as you try to ignore the pairs of eyes staring, digging into your skin, waiting for you to say something. You know they want answers— know you would have to start providing some soon if you wanted to keep things calm. Then again, you just presumably brought someone back from the dead. Via glowing like a Christmas tree. Maybe now wasn’t the time for _calm_.

 

“It was the nanites,” you say quietly, with what you feel like is too much confidence. “I felt them— shake. Inside of me.” 

 

Ana shifts her weight, and when you look at her, you see the struggle written there all over her face, the gentle warfare of questions she is wrestling with, trying to make sense of. “What does that mean?” she asks in a lower voice, patient, practiced. 

 

You open your mouth, feel your brows come together like they usually do when you’re dealing with a particularly difficult algorithm. The words clog at the base of your throat, create a sort of vacuum where it becomes difficult to force the syllables out between your teeth. “I cannot— It’s difficult to explain. I felt this— this _thing_ in my chest. Like a secondary pulse. Usually, you know, when I’m injured the nanites take care of it, and I can sort of feel them working inside of me, and it was like that, but… but worse. Or— better. Better, I guess.” You shake your head, pinch the fabric of the gown between your fingers, painfully away of your inadequacy. “I don’t— I’m trying to figure it out.”

 

Jack runs his hand along your shoulder, fixes you with a reassuring stare. “Ange,” he says, slowly, “What you did was amazing. Okay? Whatever it was, however you did it— it was amazing. You saved my life. No one’s complaining, here. We’re just— well. Curious.”

 

“Trust me,” you breathe, fitting your face between your fingers, resting your elbows against your knees, “I am, too.”

 

There is a silence, now; the three of you tucked together, shoulders brushing, minds roaming. You take your hands away from your eyes, tilt your chin down to stare at them, the little lines that trail up and down your open palm, the boney joints of your fingers, the pale skin that wraps around them. They have always been your most trusted tools— not the scalpel, not the Caduceus, not even the Valkyrie.

 

Your hands have always been the most reliable things in your life. Steady. Skilled. Reliable. 

 

Now, though— now they seem apart from your entirely, some other entity no longer under your jurisdiction, a weapon with the safety off, for better or worse. 

 

“It was the nanites,” you say again, not looking up. “They connected to your cells, somehow. They had to. They revived the necrotic tissue, fixed the ruptures, stopped the bleeding. Somehow.”

 

“Connected?” asked Jack. “Like, what, WiFi?”

 

Despite it all, you feel the corner of your lips tug up, just a little. “I’m certain it’s a little more complicated. I’ll have to run some tests.”

 

“How?” Ana asks, voice bordering on anxious.

 

“I don’t know.”

 

And, really, that’s all you knew— that you knew nothing. That you had become bigger than just _you_ , just Angela Ziegler M.D., just two hands. The silence returns, a reprieve, a chance to reflect.

 

In what was either moments or minutes, Jack speaks again, voice a little less light, a little more timid. “Ange. Where did… where was the pain? After you brought me back, where did it hurt?”

 

You glance up at him, blink. Remember the echoes of anguish that tore through your system like lightning, bolts of fire searing you into pieces. “Ah. Everywhere, really. It was… I’m not sure how to say it. I guess in my chest, mostly.”

 

“Be specific.”

 

And so you bring a hand up and press it against the spot you were sure you had been stabbed in, shot in, burned straight through. Right next to your heart.

 

Jack lets out a long exhale through his nose, glances over your head at Ana. You follow his gaze, find a new look settling upon the woman’s face, a strange mix of clarity, confusion, horror.

 

“What?” you ask, sitting straighter.

 

Jack takes a hand and presses it to his own chest, fingers dancing against the fabric of his shirt. His brows press together, create lines against his forehead, emphasize the wrinkles growing near the corner of his eyes. 

 

“That’s where I was hit,” he says. “That’s where the bullet went through.”

 

And then the realization dawns upon you like a sunrise— but an ugly one. An all too obtrusive and sudden awakening to the start of a new day, but one you did not want, had not asked for. It pushes up your throat and against your chest, an ache that has nothing to do with pain.

 

“Oh.” It’s all you can manage. 

 

“What does that mean?” Ana asks again, leaning closer, losing composure. One hand brushes against your shoulder, but you barely feel it. 

 

You don’t look at her, at him, at anything, really. Your eyes are unfocused and angled at your hands, seeing them in soft blurs of pale tan and pinks, an image you did not care to see clearly anymore. For a moment, just one more gentle, quiet moment, you don’t want to think about what it means— what they’ve done— what they still have yet to do. Just for another second, you want to be apart from all of that, want to be just Angela, want not to worry about anyone living or dying by your judgement, whatever that looks like, whatever that means. Just for a minute, you want to set it all down. 

 

But you don’t. Because you’re not just Angela, and you doubt you ever will be. Not now. Not after this.

 

“I don’t know,” you say, “But I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> title pulled from a song called "Alright" by the legendary Keaton. please, check out his works.
> 
> if you enjoyed or had any constructive criticism, drop me a line. i'll probably end up continuing this, jumping around the timeline a bit. but it'll probably be awhile, because this was more of a self-indulgence/warm-up thing than anything else.
> 
> thank you again. for those of you wondering, the next chapter of Gravity is about 50% complete. i just got on winter break, so hopefully i'll have a little more time to work on it!


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